2: Smart Selling Tools Founder, Nancy Nardin, on the SalesTech Landscape
Nancy Nardin on the SalesTech Landscape Episode Summary: Welcome to the Sales Tech Podcast, the show that talks about sales technology, what’s working, what’s not and where the industry is going. In this episode, Nancy Nardin joins the show to discuss her wealth of knowledge in sales technology. Nancy is the founder of Smart Selling Tools and is widely recognized as the voice of authority on sales technology. She’s also the creator of the Nancy Nardin SalesTech Landscape, a market landscape of well over 1,000 sales solutions sorted into 45 categories. Backed by 30 years of sales expertise, Nancy is a pioneer in mobile selling – having sold for the world’s first laptop computer manufacturer, GRiD Systems, in Silicon Valley in the early 1980’s. Today, Thom and Nancy discuss the evolution of the sales technology industry, how Nancy prioritizes her time and the inspiration to launch Smart Selling Tools. Nancy speaks to the pushback she’s seen in sales tech, how companies purchase sales technology tools and the future of the industry. What We Covered: 00:07 – Thom introduces today’s guest, Nancy Nardin who joins the show to talk about her background in sales technology and how the industry has changed over the years 06:26 – How all of the various technology apps are interacting with each other today 07:48 – Nancy speaks to the pushback she experiences in sales technology 10:53 – Nancy discusses the inspiration to launch Smart Selling Tools and analyzes her SalesTech Landscape tool 16:46 – The different approaches companies take to purchase sales technology tools 18:57 – Nancy speculates on the future of sales technology 21:46 – Advice Nancy would give to those who are heavily interested and invested in the future of sales tech 22:50 – Thom thanks Nancy for joining the show and let’s listeners know where to follow her Tweetables: “The SaaS model really opened the door to this pace of innovation that led to what we now have, eleven hundred sales technologies, versus what we had in 2010 and that was around one hundred technologies.” (04:44) “I think all sellers – or many of us that are in sales – have an entrepreneurial spirit. We’re very independent-minded people. We work very well on our own. We’re thinking about our territory as our own business. And that was my case.” (11:04) “I built the Landscape on a framework. And the framework I actually borrowed from Maslow’s Heirarchy.” (13:27) “When companies are thinking about what tools they should buy, you could certainly take a holistic view and say, ‘Let’s step back and figure out how to be a more effective and efficient organization.’ But that takes a lot of time, and the market is moving way too fast. By the time they figure that out the technology will have changed.” (17:19) “Companies used to be able to take their time and crawl along in terms of technology adoption. They can’t do that anymore because remote selling is nothing if it isn’t digital. And digital is what sales applications are.” (19:16) Links Mentioned: Nancy Nardin on LinkedIn Smart Selling Tools Website Nancy's 2021 B2B Enterprise SalesTech Landscape G2 Website